{"id":4775,"date":"2009-10-03T09:07:02","date_gmt":"2009-10-03T14:07:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/?p=4775"},"modified":"2009-10-03T09:07:02","modified_gmt":"2009-10-03T14:07:02","slug":"review-the-no-b-s-guide-to-winning-online-no-limit-texas-holdem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/2009\/10\/03\/review-the-no-b-s-guide-to-winning-online-no-limit-texas-holdem\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: The No B.S. Guide to Winning Online No-Limit Texas Hold&#8217;em"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A couple of weeks ago I read a book that has greatly improved my online poker game, and I want to recommend it.  I downloaded the Kindle version of\u00a0 <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B002AD7706?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=paulryburncom-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B002AD7706\">The No B.S. Guide to Winning Online No Limit Texas Hold&#8217;em<\/a><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border:none !important; margin:0px !important;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=paulryburncom-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=B002AD7706\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/><\/strong>, but it&#8217;s available in print format too.  Compared to most books about poker, it&#8217;s not cheap &#8211; almost $30 for print edition or $25 for Kindle edition &#8211; but if you play real-money poker online, you&#8217;ll make that amount back quickly as you apply what you learn.<\/p>\n<p>Among the things author Chris Wilcox talks about:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Why &#8220;play money&#8221; sites are not a good way to learn to play proper poker<\/li>\n<li>Why Sit&#8217;n&#8217;Go one-table tournaments are a good and inexpensive way to learn to play poker, as opposed to cash ring games which is where most players start<\/li>\n<li>Hands that Internet players will commonly play that usually would be folded in real poker rooms<\/li>\n<li>Online poker tells<\/li>\n<li>Sizing your bets properly when you want someone to call, and when you want them to fold<\/li>\n<li>The importance of having a good kicker to support your top pair<\/li>\n<li>How your strategy should change in Sit&#8217;n&#8217;Go tournaments in early stage, middle stage, on the bubble, and once you&#8217;re in the money and trying to win it all<\/li>\n<li>How to play when you&#8217;re at the end of the tournament and you&#8217;re heads-up with one other player<\/li>\n<li>The importance of taking notes on your competition<\/li>\n<li>The importance of watching the other people at the table play hands out when you have folded &#8211; this is how you develop an intuition about putting people on particular hands<\/li>\n<li>How to play particular starting hands:\u00a0 Pocket rockets, other pocket pairs, suited connectors, Big Slick, rag aces<\/li>\n<li>Best times to attempt a bluff<\/li>\n<li>Pot odds<\/li>\n<li>Cash ring game strategy and how it differs from tournaments<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Prior to reading this book, I&#8217;d made it into the money in Sit&#8217;n&#8217;Go tournaments, but I&#8217;d never come in first in one, because I didn&#8217;t understand how to play heads up.\u00a0 This book corrected my mistakes there &#8211; it made me realize that you simply can&#8217;t wait for good cards to start betting and raising.\u00a0 Within a week of reading this book I won three single-table tournaments.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s also improved my play in other stages of tournaments &#8211; I think I would have finished in the money in the 180-player tournament I played Thursday night without this book, but I probably would have finished somewhere between 10th and 18th and had $8 to show for my $4.40 buy-in.\u00a0 Thanks to strategies in this book, I got to 5th and left the table with $46.80 &#8211; quite a difference in the cash payout.<\/p>\n<p>This book has already paid for itself and has made me a much more confident player.\u00a0 If you play real-money poker online, this is a good investment.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the link to buy it on Amazon:  <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B002AD7706?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=paulryburncom-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B002AD7706\">The No B.S. Guide to Winning Online No Limit Texas Hold&#8217;em<\/a><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border:none !important; margin:0px !important;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=paulryburncom-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=B002AD7706\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A couple of weeks ago I read a book that has greatly improved my online poker game, and I want to recommend it. I downloaded the Kindle version of\u00a0 The No B.S. Guide to Winning Online No Limit Texas Hold&#8217;em, but it&#8217;s available in print format too. Compared to most books about poker, it&#8217;s not &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/2009\/10\/03\/review-the-no-b-s-guide-to-winning-online-no-limit-texas-holdem\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Review: The No B.S. Guide to Winning Online No-Limit Texas Hold&#8217;em&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4775"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4775"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4780,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4775\/revisions\/4780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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